"Pelli focuses on the unique position of architecture among the arts. He analyzes eight "connections" that influence both the artistic and practical aspects of architecture: time, construction, place, purpose, culture, design process, constituency, and oneself. Pelli discusses each connection, drawing on historic and contemporary examples, and then turns to first-person commentary, illustrating his experiences with his own buildings and projects, including such important buildings as Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (the world's tallest buildings), the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, and Washington National Airport."--Jacket.
This new monograph celebrates the creative accomplishments of one of the world's most influential architects, Cesar Pelli. The book surveys this extraordinary body of work in terms of the AIA's Gold Medalist's design, architecture, and planning, tracing Pelli's motivation as a leading designer and teacher, and the evolution of his work over the span of half a century. More than 50 projects from around the globe - museums, theatres, offices, laboratories, airports, cultural centres, civic works and master plans - are presented in rich full colour with insights from Pelli that delve into the design and construction of these landmarks from a practice that has thrived for nearly 40 years. This compendium of Pelli's life in architecture offers a unique perspective into this master architect's contribution to contemporary design and building, and its continuing impact on the world's architectural scene. AUTHOR: Michael J. Crosbie, Ph.D., FAIA, is Professor of Architecture at the University of Hartford. He is the editor-in-chief of Faith & Form: The Interfaith Journal on Religion, Art, and Architecture. Dr. Crosbie is the author of more than 20 books on architecture, and has edited and contributed to approximately 20 others. The author of hundreds of articles on architecture, design, and practice, Dr. Crosbie is a frequent contributor to international print and online publications, and lectures on architecture throughout the United States and abroad. A registered architect, Dr. Crosbie was the Walton Visiting Critic at The Catholic University of America School of Architecture and Planning in 2015. SELLING POINTS: * Showcasing one of the world's leading architects, Cesar Pelli, this book is beautifully packaged and designed, and richly illustrated with insightful commentary from Michael J. Crosbie, Ph.D., FAIA * Projects featured include retail and mixed-use projects, libraries and museums, academic buildings, research centres, residences and master plans * This book is a highly inspirational reference title for those in the architecture, urban planning and design industries 1,000 colour images
A classic examination of superb design through the centuries. Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence—ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing's Winter Palace—Rasmussen's accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession, but as an art that shapes everyday experience. In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one's professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit, but also from one's shared, everyday experience of architecture in real time—its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm and sound. Experiencing Architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”
Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind, Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects, including Anderson Anderson, Philip Beesley, Diller + Scofidio, John Hejduk, Dan Hoffman, and Kuth/Ranieri Architects. Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context. There is no doubt that installations will continue to play a critical role in the practice of architecture. Installations by Architects aims to contribute to the role of installations in sharpening our understanding of the built environment.
PAUL GOLDBERGER ON THE AGE OF ARCHITECTURE The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry, the CCTV Headquarters by Rem Koolhaas, the Getty Center by Richard Meier, the Times Building by Renzo Piano: Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Paul Goldberger’s tenure atThe New Yorkerhas documented a captivating era in the world of architecture, one in which larger-than-life buildings, urban schemes, historic preservation battles, and personalities have commanded an international stage. Goldberger’s keen observations and sharp wit make him one of the most insightful and passionate architectural voices of our time. In this collection of fifty-seven essays, the critic Tracy Kidder called “America’s foremost interpreter of public architecture” ranges from Havana to Beijing, from Chicago to Las Vegas, dissecting everything from skyscrapers by Norman Foster and museums by Tadao Ando to airports, monuments, suburban shopping malls, and white-brick apartment houses. This is a comprehensive account of the best—and the worst—of the “age of architecture.” On Norman Foster: Norman Foster is the Mozart of modernism. He is nimble and prolific, and his buildings are marked by lightness and grace. He works very hard, but his designs don’t show the effort. He brings an air of unnerving aplomb to everything he creates—from skyscrapers to airports, research laboratories to art galleries, chairs to doorknobs. His ability to produce surprising work that doesn’t feel labored must drive his competitors crazy. On the Westin Hotel: The forty-five-story Westin is the most garish tall building that has gone up in New York in as long as I can remember. It is fascinating, if only because it makes Times Square vulgar in a whole new way, extending up into the sky. It is not easy, these days, to go beyond the bounds of taste. If the architects, the Miami-based firm Arquitectonica, had been trying to allude to bad taste, one could perhaps respect what they came up with. But they simply wanted, like most architects today, to entertain us. On Mies van der Rohe: Mies’s buildings look like the simplest things you could imagine, yet they are among the richest works of architecture ever created. Modern architecture was supposed to remake the world, and Mies was at the center of the revolution, but he was also a counterrevolutionary who designed beautiful things. His spare, minimalist objects are exquisite. He is the only modernist who created a language that ranks with the architectural languages of the past, and while this has sometimes been troubling for his reputation . . . his architectural forms become more astonishing as time goes on.
When the A&M College of Texas opened its doors in 1876, its early buildings followed a Victorian architectural style. Classical architecture came to the campus with the Academic Building, after the 1912 fire that destroyed Old Main. Subsequent buildings generally followed this neoclassical path, but the growth of the campus in the Depression era saw the addition of an extraordinary group of buildings, sited in accordance with a master plan developed by college architect F. E. Giesecke and designed by S. C. P. Vosper, each of whom also held faculty positions in the first architecture program at a state college in Texas. The buildings designed by Vosper are arguably the finest buildings on the campus, uniquely expressive of the agricultural and mechanical origins of the university; they delight the senses with color, sculpture, and wit. Nancy T. McCoy and David G. Woodcock, distinguished preservation architects and scholars, review the history of Texas A&M campus architecture and provide in-depth coverage of Vosper and his legacy. Illustrated by the sumptuous photography of Carolyn Brown, Architecture That Speaks concludes with observations on recent approaches toward the reuse and rehabilitation of campus heritage architecture and a view to the future, as plans evolve for further development of the campus that maintains a respect for both strategic vision and historical heritage.
Why Architects Matter examines the key role of research- led, ethical architects in promoting wellbeing, sustainability and innovation. It argues that the profession needs to be clear about what it knows and the value of what it knows if it is to work successfully with others. Without this clarity, the marginalization of architects from the production of the built environment will continue, preventing clients, businesses and society from getting the buildings that they need. The book offers a strategy for the development of a twenty-first-century knowledge-led built environment, including tools to help evidence, develop and communicate that value to those outside the field. Knowing how to demonstrate the impact and value of their work will strengthen practitioners’ ability to pitch for work and access new funding streams. This is particularly important at a time of global economic downturn, with ever greater competition for contracts and funds driving down fees and making it imperative to prove value at every level. Why Architects Matter straddles the spheres of ‘Practice Management and Law’, ‘History and Theory’, ‘Design’, ‘Housing’, ‘Sustainability’, ‘Health’, ‘Marketing’ and ‘Advice for Clients’, bringing them into an accessible whole. The book will therefore be of interest to professional architects, architecture students and anyone with an interest in our built environment and the role of professionals within it.
